Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Gail Winfrey (/ˈoʊprə/; born Orpah Gail Winfrey;[b] January 29, 1954), also known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011.[3][4] Dubbed the "Queen of All Media",[5] she was the richest African-American of the 20th century[6][7] and was once the world's only black billionaire.[8] By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.[9][10]
"Oprah" redirects here. Not to be confused with Orpah or Opera.
Oprah Winfrey
- Television presenter
- actress
- television producer
- media proprietor
- philanthropist
- author
1973–present
- Chairwoman and CEO of Harpo Productions (1986–present)
- Chairwoman, CEO and CCO of the Oprah Winfrey Network (2011–present)
Stedman Graham (1986–present)
Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a single teenage mother and later raised in inner-city Milwaukee. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teenage years and became pregnant at 14; her son was born prematurely and died in infancy.[11] Winfrey was then sent to live with the man she calls her father, Vernon Winfrey, a barber in Nashville, Tennessee, and landed a job in radio while still in high school.[4] By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey's often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place,[12] she launched her own production company.
Credited with creating a more intimate, confessional form of media communication,[13] Winfrey popularized and revolutionized[13][14] the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue.[13] By the mid-1990s, Winfrey had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, mindfulness, and spirituality. Though she has been criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas,[15] and having an emotion-centered approach,[16] she has also been praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.[17] Winfrey also emerged as a political force in the 2008 presidential race, with her endorsement of Barack Obama estimated to have been worth about one million votes during the 2008 Democratic primaries.[18] In the same year, she formed her own network, the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). In 2013, Winfrey was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.[19]
In 1994, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[20] She has received honorary doctorate degrees from multiple universities.[21] Winfrey has won many awards throughout her career, including 18 Daytime Emmy Awards (including the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Chairman's Award), two Primetime Emmy Awards (including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award), a Tony Award, a Peabody Award, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award awarded by the Academy Awards, in addition to two competitive Academy Award nominations. Winfrey was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.[22]
Early life
Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954; her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and "Oprah" stuck.[b] She was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to a teenaged mother,[23] Vernita Lee, and father Vernon Winfrey. Winfrey's parents never married.[24] Vernita Lee (1935–2018) was a housemaid.[25][26] Vernon Winfrey (1933–2022)[27] was a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who was in the Armed Forces when she was born.[25][c] A genetic test in 2006 determined that her matrilineal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia. Her genetic makeup was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, and 3% East Asian. However, given the imprecision of genetic testing, the East Asian markers may actually be Native American.[29]
After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled north, and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 – February 27, 1963). Her grandmother was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which other children made fun of her.[23][30] Her grandmother taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother was reportedly abusive.[31]
At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother had been, largely as a result of the long hours she worked as a maid.[25] Around this time, Lee had given birth to another daughter, Winfrey's younger half-sister, Patricia,[32] who died of causes related to cocaine addiction in February 2003 at age 43.[33] By 1962, Lee was having difficulty raising both daughters, so Winfrey was temporarily sent to live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee.[34] While Winfrey was in Nashville, Lee gave birth to a third daughter,[35] who was put up for adoption in the hopes of easing the financial straits that had led to Lee's being on welfare, and was later also named Patricia.[36] Winfrey did not know that she had a second half-sister until 2010.[36] By the time Winfrey moved back with her mother, Lee had also given birth to Winfrey's half-brother Jeffrey, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989.[33] At the age of eight, she was baptized in a Baptist church.[37]
Winfrey has stated she was molested by her cousin, uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old, something she first announced on a 1986 episode of her TV show regarding sexual abuse.[38][39] A biographer alleged that when Winfrey discussed the alleged abuse with family members at age 24, they reportedly refused to believe her account.[40] Winfrey once commented that she had chosen not to be a mother because she had not been mothered well.[41] At 13, after suffering what she described as years of abuse, Winfrey ran away from home.[2] When she was 14, she became pregnant, but her son was born prematurely and died shortly after birth.[42] Winfrey later stated she felt betrayed by the family member who had sold the story of her son to the National Enquirer in 1990.[43]
Winfrey attended Lincoln Middle and High School in Milwaukee, but after early success in the Upward Bound program, was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School. Upon transferring, she said she was continually reminded of her poverty as she rode the bus to school with fellow African-Americans, some of whom were servants of her classmates' families. She began to rebel and steal money from her mother in an effort to keep up with her free-spending peers.[44][45] As a result, her mother once again sent her to live with Vernon in Nashville, although this time she did not take her back. Vernon was strict but encouraging, and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl, and joined her high school speech team at East Nashville High School, placing second in the nation in dramatic interpretation.[46][47] In 1986, Winfrey said, "'When my father took me, it changed the course of my life. He saved me. He simply knew what he wanted and expected. He would take nothing less'".[25]
Winfrey's first job as a teenager was working at a local grocery store.[48][49] At the age of 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.[50][51][52] She also attracted the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time.[38] She worked there during her senior year of high school and in her first two years of college.[53] She had won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communication. However, she did not deliver her final paper and receive her degree until 1987, by which time she was a successful television personality.[54]
Winfrey's career in media would not have surprised her grandmother, who once said that ever since Winfrey could talk, she was on stage. As a child, she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property. Winfrey later acknowledged her grandmother's influence, saying it was Hattie Mae who had encouraged her to speak in public and "gave me a positive sense of myself".[55]
Other media
Film
Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), as distraught housewife Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The Alice Walker novel later became a Broadway musical which opened in late 2005, with Winfrey credited as a producer. In October 1998, Winfrey produced and starred in the film Beloved, based on Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name. To prepare for her role as Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Winfrey experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being tied up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods. Despite major advertising, including two episodes of her talk show dedicated solely to the film, and moderate to good critical reviews, Beloved opened to poor box-office results, losing approximately $30 million. While promoting the movie, co-star Thandie Newton described Winfrey as "a very strong technical actress and it's because she's so smart. She's acute. She's got a mind like a razor blade."[90] Harpo Productions released a film adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in 2005. The made-for-television film was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks and starred Halle Berry in the lead female role.
In late 2008, Winfrey's company Harpo Films signed an exclusive output pact to develop and produce scripted series, documentaries, and movies exclusively for HBO.[91]
In 2013, Winfrey starred in the film The Butler directed by Lee Daniels. Though her performance garnered significant Oscar buzz, she was not nominated for the award.[92]
Oprah voiced Gussie the goose in Charlotte's Web (2006) and voiced Judge Bumbleton in Bee Movie (2007), co-starring the voices of Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger. In 2009, Winfrey provided the voice for the character of Eudora, the mother of Princess Tiana, in Disney's The Princess and the Frog and in 2010, narrated the US version of the BBC nature program Life for Discovery.
In 2018, Winfrey starred as Mrs. Which in the film adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time.[93] She also lent her voice to an animated virtual-reality short film written and directed by Eric Darnell, starring John Legend, titled Crow: The Legend, telling a native American origin tale.[94]
Publishing and writing
Winfrey has co-authored five books. At the announcement of a weight-loss book in 2005, co-authored with her personal trainer Bob Greene, it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken the record for the world's highest book advance fee, previously held by the autobiography of former U.S. President Bill Clinton.[95]
By Oprah Winfrey
About Oprah Winfrey
